Thymeleaf inline text shows null Strings as 'null'

Question

In thymeleaf 2.1.4, when evaluating null String values with

<p th:inline="text">[[${bean.myNullvar}]]</p>

The outlined html is

<p>null</p>

When I use it with th:text it works correctly:

<p th:text="${myNullvar}"></p>

is outlined as:

<p></p>

¿Is there any way to render String null values as empty ones with inlining? ¿How is it going to work in Thyeleaf 3, where inline is active by default?

Thanks in advance

In your first example your variable is within the p-tag; in the second it's not. — Andreas Gnyp
– Andreas Gnyp, Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 17:16
Both cases are valid uses of thymeleaf, but the first one renders null as "null" instead of empty string. I want to know if there is any way to make inlining work like explicit th:text for null values. — Basa
– Basa, Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 18:13
Don't know how to put this: Both statements are barely "comparable". Please, learn the difference between the value of an attribute and innerHTML. — Andreas Gnyp
– Andreas Gnyp, Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 18:24
The question is just related to the way thymeleaf processes templates. Following their documentation, the unique drawback of using inlines is that unprocessed templates are less "friendy". I am aware there are many other features not available (yet) to inlined text, like injecting unescaped text, buit I have not found any mention to this behaviour and I would like to know if it is a bug or a feature, and if it is going to change in future stable 3.x releases. — Basa
– Basa, Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 18:47
Ok. I don't know, if they are going to change this, but it seems like a "consistent" behaviour. So - for the moment - you'd have to rewrite your (inline-)methods so they always return a String, hence an empty String if the value is null. — Andreas Gnyp
– Andreas Gnyp, Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 19:08

ndrone · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-28 01:42:31Z

4

Thymeleaf has some string utility method you can try

Here is the null safe toString.

${#strings.toString(obj)}

answered Apr 28, 2016 at 1:42

ndrone

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3 Comments

Basa Over a year ago

Thank you! I will try [[${#strings.toString(obj)}]] (verbose but cohernet with how I am creating my templates)

ndrone Over a year ago

@Basa not a problem. Here is a link to all the string utility methods that Thymeleaf supports. thymeleaf.org/doc/tutorials/2.1/usingthymeleaf.html#strings

Basa Over a year ago

I have tried that expresion, but only checks null for the beans preceding the values, ${#strings.toString(emnployee.name)} == ${employee?.name}. There is however an utiliy that do the job: ${#strings.defaultString(obj,'')}. Thanks again @ndrone.

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